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Al-Arabia – Over a dozen US and western-made parts were found in an Iranian drone that was downed in Ukraine, a Ukrainian intelligence report revealed.
Forty of the 52 components Ukraine removed from the Iran-made Shahed-136 drone appear to have been manufactured by 13 different American companies, the assessment showed.
The other 12 components were manufactured by companies in Canada, Switzerland, Japan, Taiwan, and China.
In his nightly address on January 3, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, citing a separate intelligence report, said that Russia plans to carry out prolonged attacks on Kyiv using Iranian-made Shahed drones.
But despite vowing to crackdown on exports of high-end materials, the initial report indicates that the US continues to struggle to stop companies from selling technology to Iran and identify third-party distributors that could be reselling them illegally.
Biden’s administration in December said it created a designated task force to investigate how US and Western-made technology – including small equipment like semiconductors and GPS modules to large parts like engines – were ending up in Iranian drones, CNN reported.
“We are looking at ways to target Iranian UAV production through sanctions, export controls, and talking to private companies whose parts have been used in the production. We are assessing further steps we can take in terms of export controls to restrict Iran’s access to technologies used in drones,” National Security Council Spokesperson Adrienne Watson told CNN at the time.
Sanctions may not be enough to stop Iran from acquiring western technology to build their drones, the report noted. Further monitoring of how and where the parts have been coming from is needed to halt their distribution, it added.
